 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this beautiful Friday night. Hope everybody is having a great time. We got audio, video, everything looks good. All right. All right, we've got a lot to talk about today. It'll upset some of you to please others. As always, we're going to pull back no punches. We're going to go for it. We're talking inflation. We'll do a little economics. We're talking January 6th Commission. That's going to be a fun topic. All right, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the January 6th Commission and everything it found out. So yes, I'm sorry, but Donald Trump's name will come up. And we will be talking about Donald Trump and whatever. And you'll be able to accuse me, as usual, of Trump de-agement syndrome. And then finally, we'll talk about, ooh, leftist in retreat. How the far left is significantly in retreats, losing left and right. And that's the great tragedy, I think, that we're going to the conclusion of a discussion today is this big tragedy. We have a party on the left that is really completely and utterly bankrupt. The party on the left that wants to destroy this country and whose policies, unbelievably unpopular in America and therefore cannot win, cannot be successful. And you're going to see in the 2022 mid-term election going to be completely crushed. And a party on the right, which is pathetic and horrible, but is probably more electable than the party on the left. And it's going to win elections, but it's represented by horrible ideology, horrible ideas, and horrible people like the former president. So it's just like, where do you go? Where do you go? Did Ben Shapiro actually say he wants Trump in jail? Has Ben Shapiro gone anti-Trump? Is that possible? I don't think that's possible. I mean, Ben Shapiro was trying to stick up to Trump not that long ago. So Ben Shapiro has flipped and well, not flipped, but acknowledged his hatred of Donald Trump, which he's had, I think, from day one. That would be amazing. Yeah, he said, if he's guilty of crimes, he wants him in jail. But he's never going to admit he's guilty of crimes. There's nothing Trump, as he said, could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue. And his supporters would still support him. Nobody would admit that he committed any crimes. They'd find some excuse for what he did. Yes, I don't think Ben Shapiro has the cojones to be anti-Trump. He'd lose too many of his listeners. He'd be attacked by his friends and colleagues and associates. He doesn't have it. He just doesn't have it. He's anti-Trump. Inside, he's always been anti-Trump. For instance, 2016, he told me when I did the interview with him that he hated Trump, he said as much as I did. But he can't say it. He can't say it. Shapiro wouldn't go anti-Trump. He hates Never Trumpers. Well, then he hates me. He's very friendly towards me. I don't think he hates me. All right. Shapiro's anti-Trump until it hurts him financially. He lacks, unfortunately, integrity, as so many people in our world do. He's not willing to walk away in the name of what he really believes. But we are way ahead of ourselves. This is not a show about Ben Shapiro. And we're not talking about Trump yet. Bass Clay says, yep, same with Glenn Beck. The difference is Ben Shapiro is a lot smarter than Glenn Beck, is a lot smarter than Glenn Beck. And it's a lot more connected to reality than Beck. Beck is detached. It always has been from reality. And he creates these, just watch something he did about inflation, and Japan, and bonds, and Japanese bonds, and inflation in Japan, and what's going to happen, and how it's all get a spiral into this inflation death trap. And it's like, God, half of what he says is true. Half of what he said is half true. But the way he weaves it together is completely false. And it comes out conspiratorial. Even though it's not really conspiratorial, but it comes out that way because that's Glenn Beck. Yeah, drives me nuts. Anyway, inflation. Inflation numbers were reported today for the last month. And annualized inflation is running at 8.6% higher than expectations. Expectation was 8.3%. So Jonathan says, Jonathan Honing says, completely justifiable. Absolutely justifiable. That given inflation, he says, does inflation mean your $600 show goal is now $700? And my answer is, of course. Now, not immediately because it takes inflation to trickle down a while. But yeah, it's $650 starting today. Thank you, Jonathan. And it'll be $700 in a couple of months and onwards and upwards. I mean, it just should be $1,000 because my shows are that good that we should be able to raise $1,000 in the Super Chat every single show. But let's start with $650 and see how we start creeping up. Yes. So I'll have to change. Let me change the goal up here. See, now with my new app, I am completely in control of this. So yes, we have $622.68 to go to make this $650 goal. Here we go. I'm late. Well, Catherine's not here today. So she's not here to egg you guys on and to get you guys going. But thank you, Jeffrey. Really appreciate it. All right. So inflation reported higher than expectation. Today, I don't know why anybody was surprised, given everything that's going on in the world, given the fact that the Fed has done nothing to take money, in a sense, out of the economy, given supply chain problems, the shutdown in shutdowns, the continued shutdowns in China, the continuation rise in all prices, the threat of global food shortages which will drive up food prices all over. It's surprising that it's only 8.6. It's surprising it's not going up even further. But this is the interesting thing about this number that is inflation. Larry Summers. Now, I don't know if you guys know who Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is a well-known economist. He's one of the real Keynesians. I think he's a neo-Keynesian, very well-known, very famous. He was the president of Harvard. You might recall that he was a kind of a straight shooting president of Harvard. General, he's a straight shooter. And he was fired for saying something about women and science and math. And he was fired from the presidency of Harvard University. Anyway, Larry Summers, again, mainline, I'd say mainline, libble, kind of left of center, not wacky left, but left of center, economist, disagreeing on a lot of things. He's been very good at inflation. He said that the stimulus was going to be inflationary about a year ago. He has been complaining that the Fed is taking too long to react, that everybody's just sitting on their hands and now reacting. He ran a little experiment, which others have done before, where he took the way inflation was measured in the 1970s. And he adjusted today's inflation to the methodology of the 1970s. And what he discovered was something that we've known for years now, is that if you do it that way, and whether it's justified to do it that way is a question, but if you do it that way, inflation is higher than it was at its peak in the 1970s. And remember, to get that inflation down, we had to do a number of different things. The Federal Reserve had to raise short-term interest rates to close to 20%. 20, 2-0. The US government had to reform taxes, the tax code and actually increased revenue, which gives confidence to the bond market that debt would be repaid. And President Carter, particularly Carter and then Ronald Reagan, had to deregulate the economy to spur supply. None of those things are happening. So really, if you think about where we are in the inflationary cycle, we're much closer to the beginning of the 1970s than we are to the beginning of the 1980s, when inflation was finally crushed. The Fed responded moderately in the early 1970s. Government continued to spend like there was no tomorrow in the beginning of the 1970s. Everything about the 1970s was supportive of inflation, and it looks like the same thing is happening right now. So it's really, really. And then, of course, we get the oil shock, the oil embargo in 1973. It just lines up so perfectly with the early to mid 1970s. So inflation is going to be with us. Inflation is not actually going away. As I said in previous shows, we're likely to get stagflation. The market, which was expecting a slight decline in inflation for some bizarre reason, which I don't know and understand, responded very strongly to the inflation number. I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me, but the NASDAQ went down more than 3%. The S&P and the Dow went down more than 2%. Bank stocks went down 3%. So the market responded very dramatically to it. Almost everybody last year and early this year called inflation transitory, not just Janet Yellen. Famously said that. To Janet Yellen's credit. It's rare that I give Janet Yellen credit. Oh, I want to know what I do. She's actually admitted she made a mistake. Now, how many people ever admit to making a mistake in government? So she actually admitted to making the mistake. So they have it. And it's not like, as I've said many, many times, it's not like if Trump had been elected, we wouldn't have inflation now. We would. He supported the stimulus package that Biden passed when Trump was going to do the same thing. $2,000 checks to everybody. If you remember, Trump was committed to that. He complained it was actually too small. They gave too few checks to people. So this inflation is not solely Biden's. It's Trump-Biden inflation. And Trump would have been even more adamant with regard to Powell not raising interest rates. So it's completely unclear to me that the government would have responded any differently if Trump had been elected president. But luckily, he was not. Now, there is a confusion about inflation, which I always want to mention. It's always worth talking about. Every time inflation comes up, we talk about this, but it's really, really crucial. The real meaning of inflation is the increase in the money supply, the increase in the amount of money that is in the economy. And we've been living with inflation for a very long time by that measure, although the challenge with that measure of inflation is what do you mean by money? Is it M0, M1, M2? Is it just cash? Is it checking accounts? Is it saving accounts? Do government bonds count as money when interest rates are 0? There's an argument they should. What counts as money? So a big problem that we have in defining inflation is in defining money in a fiat economy, in a fiat economy. It is very, very, very difficult to actually define what monetary inflation is. So that's part of the problem in the monetary inflation definition. But the other problem is, OK, well, what is the way in which people feel the inflation? Well, the Austrian economists will tell you, inflation causes malinvestment. That is investment in the wrong products, in the wrong industries, in the wrong time frames. It distorts supply and demand. It distorts investment primarily. The consequence of that are higher prices, lack of inefficiency, the wrong products being produced, and slower economic growth, and the wrong kind of economic growth accretion of bubbles, all of that stuff, none of which is actually directly felt by the public. You could argue that inflation causes asset prices to go up, so stock markets go up, real estate goes up, things like that. Again, it's going up. Regular people don't feel it as a problem. What do they feel? They feel it as a problem when prices are going up. That they feel, that hurts. Prices right now are going up. If you're buying the stuff that most Americans buy, food, gas, rent, prices are going up dramatically, 8% to 10%. Now, that's 8% to 10% lowering of your standard of living, unless your income is going up 10% at the same time. If you've got a variable rate mortgage, you're suddenly going to have to pay a lot more on your mortgage. So your cost of living is going up dramatically. Now, wages are also going up quite fast. But are they keeping up with inflation? Not for everybody, particularly not for the poor. So inflation is something people actually feel, actually touches them. And that's why people use price inflation as a stand-in for inflation, even though the cause and the distortive effect of inflation, the cause is monetary inflation, growth in money supply. And the distortive impact of the growth of the monetary supply happens even when you don't get price inflation. So we've had inflation for the last 10 years. It's not been price inflation. It hasn't manifest itself in price of money. Now it has, partially because of the helicopter money, the Trump and Biden administration, the way they distribute the money to all of us to basically just consume. And what it results in is basically a lowering of the standard of living. And we're heading towards stagnation because it makes economic calculation very difficult for business people. It makes economic decision-making very difficult. It makes it very difficult to think and plan long term. And therefore, the economy is grind to a halt. So the specter of inflation is disastrous. And one of the reasons politicians for decades now have tried to really avoid inflation is because Americans were pissed off about inflation in the 1970s. They were pissed off. And there's a real political price to pay if you're going to inflict inflation on the American people. NM can pronounce thank you for the $20. It's $20 because I like the economic and politics topics. Thank you. So inflation hit a high. Stocks are down. I think, and I've said this before, stocks still have a long way potentially to go down. This is not the end of it. They'll bump up, they'll keep going down. The economy, there's nothing. There's no good news on the horizon. There's no deregulation on the horizon. There's probably no tax cuts on the horizon. There's no significant lowering of trade barriers on the horizon, which would be very good. I mean, Biden hasn't even repealed Trump's ridiculous increases in tariffs. There's no good news on the horizon. There's inflation, and inflation's bad news. And I don't see this Congress doing anything positive for the inflation, then you're going to get, now it could be that if Republicans get elected, they could cut a deal with Biden to start cutting spending, to reducing the deficit. That would be good news for the market. And that would be good news for inflation, because part of inflation is expectation of inflation. And if government debt actually starts going down, that's a good sign. But I don't think it'll go down, because I don't think they can get anywhere close to surplus, but at least they can stop the ever-growing acceleration of government debt in this country. Hard to tell what's going to happen at any particular price. I don't know. I don't have any insight into how much drilling is going on right now. Not much from what I understand because of ESG and because of the concerns that people in the oil industry have that they drill today, but then they're going to be shut down tomorrow. It's not clear what the Saudis are doing exactly and whether they'll increase production or not increase production. It's not clear if the US is going to cut a deal with Iran to get more oil into the market and let them off the hook in terms of sanctions. So there's just a lot going on in terms of the oil markets to say that one particular outcome is likely to happen versus any other outcomes. So there's always challenges with refining capacity and part of the problem right now with refining capacity is that some of the refiners, and again, I mentioned this in an earlier show, some of the refiners in Louisiana, I think, specialize in refining heavy oil. Well, the heavy oil that they were refining was heavy oil that they were importing from Russia. This is why we're importing oil from Russia. US oil is not that heavy. It's not light like the Saudi oil, but it's not heavy. So once we stopped importing oil from Russia, these, in a sense, these refineries are dormant because they don't have heavy oil in the US. They're only other two places that have heavy oil is one, Venezuela, but we won't import oil from Venezuela and that's why, by the way, the Biden administration immediately when cutting off the Russians ran off to Venezuela to try to suck up to them to get the oil flowing back to the US. They couldn't cut a deal there, so we don't have Venezuela and oil coming in. And then the other place is Canada. The tar sands of Canada produces heavy oil. That's what the pipeline, what was the pipeline called? The pipeline was supposed to deliver that heavy oil from Canada all the way down to Louisiana, to the fine as their keystone pipeline, thank you, Paul. And be able to refine that oil. So right now, because we don't have access to heavy oil, some of the refineries are sitting dormant. And then you've got the whole problem in the summers, where in California in particular, by regulation, they have to combine oil with ethanol, which requires a particular refining capability that now is not available for other things, for other things and so on. So yeah, anyway, so that's why we're short on refining capacity. So I don't, all prices are very hard to predict primarily because there's so much supply that is held in few hands. It's not really a market. And when you look at Saudis and you look at OPEC and how much oil they can release, when you look at the, then one has to wonder, of course, there are other places that have vast quantities of oil like Mexico, where it's not being deployed. The largest reserves of oil in the world, actually held by Venezuela. I mean, there's a ton of oil out there in the world. There's no shortage of oil. There's no shortage of oil. So the world has plenty of oil. It's getting it. It's actually accessing it and getting it to the United States. All right, Ashton, thank you. Wow, 200 bucks, really appreciate it. Ashton writes, all we can do is continue to fight the so-called progressive and their attempt to create policies that will bring the United States with backward economics. I must say, I hate their morality, always championed victimhood and demonizing those who strive for greatness. Absolutely, absolutely. The challenge is that as we continue to fight the progressives, we embolden the American right, which I think in many respects is horrific. So it's what's the alternative to the progressives. That's what I wanna know. Orem2049 says, do you know of Keith Wieners and his company, Monterey Metals? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the economic theories in his company. They lease gold and repay interest in gold. I have not looked at the business models. I really don't have any comments. I'm a little skeptical of some of the economic theories. I'm sure he's got a lot of good things to say. I'm a little skeptical of some of the economic theories based on discussions we had a long time ago and stuff I've seen. But I'm not in a position, I don't know well enough to do a critique of it or to actually analyze it. I'd have to actually research, again, I forgot to press start, to actually do some significant research into it to give you a sense of what I actually think about the actual theories. So yeah, I'm not gonna comment on it because I don't know. And the business model I'm curious about. So I'll look at that because then I'm interesting how successful the business model is. And gold is interesting because we've had inflation, we have inflation, we're living through inflation. Gold went up a lot during COVID but really hasn't moved much, right? It's still between 1800 and 1900. It went over 2000 at some point but it's come down. So gold as a inflation hedge seems like a disappointment. Now, maybe I've got it wrong. Again, I'm not an expert on gold but it seems like a disappointment. I'm not sure I'm jumping into buy gold right now. Of course, the flip side, not the flip side, another aspect of inflation hedge is Bitcoin. People were touting Bitcoin as the inflation hedge, the new inflation hedge. God, Bitcoin has been down 50% from its highs, more than 50% from its highs. And it's being flat now, bouncing around 30,000, goes up a little bit, over 30,000 goes down a little bit below, it's been 28 to 31,000 for weeks and weeks and weeks now. And it's just going nowhere. It could easily go down to 10,000 because it's easily go down to zero but it could easily go down a lot and but people are touting it as an inflation hedge. Well, hopefully that's one claim that now can be put to the side. It's not an inflation hedge. If you bought Bitcoin when inflation was first announced, you're down. If you bought Bitcoin six months before inflation was first announced, you'd be way down, 50% down. So Bitcoin is so unstable. It's also not money, you can't transact in a currency that is going like this all the time, all the time. And big movements, not like the dollar yen or the dollar, all the other things. You know, it's which move, they move but they move small, this moves big. By the way, it's another interesting phenomena. The with inflation, the value of the dollars going up relative to the pound sterling, the euro and particularly the yen. And the reason for that is that I think the markets are expecting inflation in all these other countries but they also expect the Federal Reserve to be particularly aggressive about inflation. And if the Federal Reserve is particularly aggressive about inflation, then you'll also get high interest rates. And therefore, if you hold dollars and you put them in the bank, you get a high interest rate whereas in Europe, you're still very close to zero interest rates if not negative. In Japan, there's almost no return you can get on your yen. So people would rather buy dollars even though there's inflation so that when the Fed raises interest rates they'll be able to get some interest on their money. Richard, thank you. Wow, $100, I really appreciate it. How do you think inflation will affect capital markets? Asking for some interested perspective is this summer I'm starting work in this field. I mean, I expect inflation to continue to cause markets to decline primarily because as inflation becomes more real in people's minds and people's expectations, the more convinced people are becoming that the Fed will have to raise interest rates significantly and that other and will have to, in a sense, reverse its past monetary policy which was to monetarily inflate the markets, to print money. They will have to suck money out of the economy by selling their bonds which they have started doing but they're still doing very little of it in relative terms. But they would have to sell bonds, suck money out of the economy, raise interest rates which is gonna cause a recession. So they're convinced that a recession is coming and if you convince the recession is coming and you think interest rates are gonna be high then first, if you believe that stocks as I do ultimately are priced based on a discounted cash flow model, then if the discount rate is going up significantly from close to zero to maybe eight, 10%, maybe higher, then what is the value of those future cash flows now? It's a lot lower and by the way, it's a lot lower than the market has so far gone down. So they're still not convinced it would go that high. So I would expect stock markets to still go down if inflation stays up, the longer inflation stays up, the more it's gonna hurt stocks not because the inflation itself hurts the stocks because you might see short-term profitability be okay because they can raise prices. So revenue might be okay but over the long run because we're heading into a recession or the worst of all worlds which is kind of a stagflation where you get both a recession and inflation. All right, we got Cori for 50 bucks. Oh, you're off topic. So I'll get back to Cori in a little, let's see on topic we've got Landon. I bought my first house two years ago for $340,000 at a 30 year fixed rate of 2.5%. It's now with 500,000 and rates of 5%, 6%, insane. Who can afford that? I couldn't. Well, yeah, who can afford it? And you're making a killing though. So the people who benefit the most from inflation are people who are borrowed money at a fixed rate. I mean, just think about how you're paying 2% when inflation is 8%. You know, that is making money. That is making money and that's pretty amazing. So yes, it's very hard to understand. But look, wages are going up, hopefully. People used to, in the 1970s mortgage rates were 12, 14%. People still bought homes. Now homes are a lot cheaper, but people did start by homes. So there are people out there making a lot of money. There's a lot of people, statistics are the other day. And I don't remember the exact number, but the number of people making six figures in the United States has increased dramatically over the last 20, 30 years. So the middle class has shrunk primarily because many people in the middle class have become what is defined as upper class. They're making a lot more money. There's a lot of people with money driving up real estate prices and could still afford it. All right, Gail asks, I wonder if the lack of overfinding reason, Canada, especially Alberta, is the result of environmentalism, crown lands, low population, other factors? Good question, I don't know. I mean, it sounds like all of that makes sense, but I don't know why Canada doesn't refine its own oil. It might be that it's easier to transport crude and then refine it, then refine it, and then transport the refined products. Here's a thought, when you refine oil, I don't know if this is true. So this is me speculating. You guys will tell me. A refinery has multiple outputs, gasoline being one, but all the other products, when you refine all the stuff that makes plastics, the stuff that goes into other products, all the different things. So once you refine it, you have to have multiple ways to get it out. So refineries almost always near ports, near hubs where they can get it out by multiple avenues. Crude is one product, so you just need a pipeline and you can pipe it anywhere. But the refinery needs like 10 pipelines out because each product will need its own pipe. Now I just came up with that myself right now. It sounds right, but I don't know if it is. Richard, for 50, yeah, so let me just say that. Richard asked, thank you, how do you think these housing market trends will affect mortgage-backed securities and assets of that nature? Well, the value of mortgage-backed securities is going down. You can, I mean, sure that's happening, I haven't looked in the market, but as interest rates go up, the existing mortgages, let's say paying two, three, four percent with interest rates going up so that existing mortgages are 5%, the mortgage-backed securities must have taken a hit, must have tumbled. So look, there's an inverse relationship always between market interest rates and bond prices. The higher market of all bonds, all kinds of bonds, whether they're backed by an asset or whether backed by the US government or the backed by a company, whatever the bond is, as interest rates go up, bond prices come down. Bond prices come down. So mortgage-backed security prices have come down, which is interesting, because the Federal Reserve is about to start selling something like $10 billion of mortgage-backed securities a month, maybe they're really doing that. That would drive prices down even more because there are lots of sellers, I'm not exactly sure who the buyers are. Not sure who the buyers are. So yes, remember always, inverse relationship between interest rates and prices. As interest rates go up, prices come down. Financial assets, but particularly a bond, which are the nominated interest. All right, good. So let's move on to our next topic. That was inflation. I remind everybody that we do have a super chat on. The goal for today is 650. Inflation has forced me to increase a goal from 600 to 650. So we've got 157 to go. We've made almost $500 really, really fast. So thank you to everybody at Ashton and Richard and Orum and Corey for contributing so much. One quick last question on inflation. Is the Fed going to be able to stop inflation? I think it's gonna be very difficult because I don't think the Fed can stop inflation by itself. I think you also have to affect supply. So this is based on my readings and my readings of John Cochran and other economists and thinking about this. What happened in 1982 when Volcker stopped inflation was not only that Volcker increased interest rates and therefore forced the economy into dramatic recession which crossed credit creation, which dried up liquidity in the market and therefore reduced the amount of money available for people. But it's a recession that did that more than anything else. At the same time, supply, the supply of goods was dramatically increasing at ever better prices, cheaper prices, because of massive, unprecedented deregulation that happened under Jimmy Carter and then under Ronald Reagan. It's hard to imagine how much deregulation happened in the 1970s during Jimmy Carter's era. It really started under Ford starting in 1975 through 1980. There was massive deregulation. That contributed to reducing inflation and then on top of that, the 1982 tax bill, which rejiggered tax rates and actually increased tax revenue for the government and the market being convinced that deficits would go down, which they didn't, but the market thought they would all contributed to the fact that inflation started was really being crushed at that time. Buzz asked, is tech going to crash like 2000? I don't know, it's hard to tell. Nothing's exactly like it was. I do think tech is in for a rough ride for a while. I don't think it will recover quickly. I don't think this is one of those down for six months or whatever since January, but the second half of the year, they're just gonna take off and make it all back up. I don't think that's the case. So I think it's gonna be lengthy and painful. The thing that characterizes the tech, the collapse in 2000 was that it lasted until 2002 and the NASDAQ didn't recover to its previous high until I think 2013 or 2014. So it took over 10 years to recover. I'm not saying that's what's gonna happen right now, but that's something to keep in your back of your mind in terms of history, in terms of what can happen. And I don't think people have completely internalized that in terms of the downside. So the only safe bet now is gold. So the only safe bet now is gold. I'm not sure. I think value stocks are pretty good bats right now. So I wouldn't, I've got most of my 401k stuff in value stocks. I've had it forever, even when value stocks underperformed the rest of the market. I think now that overperforming, they're still down, but they're down a lot less. And I think from this point, they could sustain the rest of what's gonna happen in ways that I don't think tech can. So value stock is definitely something to think about if you wanna be in the stock market. Richard, another 50 bucks. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, you're on the answers are worth more than this and I'll try and make sure you hit your goal for the day. Once I get my first paycheck, I intend to give more next. Maybe I'll try to sponsor a show on art or on Korean dramas if others are interested. Yeah, that would be great. I'd love to do a show on either one of those. All right, let's see. Let's talk about, I know this topic, nobody really wants to talk about this, including me, but let's talk about the January 6th hearing that occurred. You know, where to start? Let's start by their significance or insignificance. I think in the grand scheme of things, making these hearings public, live on television, broadcast to everybody, is gonna land up to be insignificant and unimportant. The fact is that the people watching these are people who know the truth already, right? And we will talk about what was revealed yesterday because a lot of it was revealed and it's interesting, but everything was revealed yesterday is things about the degree of how awful things were and how awful Trump behaved and how much Trump was culpable. But we all knew this. We saw it with our own eyes. I mean, I remember watching live television when this was happening. So I know what happened on January 6th. I know that Trump did absolutely nothing. I know they chanted Hank Pence. I mean, what's interesting that came out yesterday was that when Donald Trump heard that, right, his response was, I've got it here. You know, his response to Hank Mike Pence was, hmm, maybe our supporters have the right idea and Pence actually deserves it. That was the president of the United States talking about his own vice president while this insanity is going on. So I know, I don't need more proof that Donald Trump should never be president, should have been impeached twice, should have been thrown out of the White House. This is a man that is not fit to be president of the United States by any measure. I know that. I've said it for what, six years. So for me to watch the hearings is just, uh-huh, yep. Yep, it's actually, yep, he's worse than I thought. Okay, I'm not surprised he's worse than I thought. I'm not surprised. He answers the fact that we know Trump didn't call the troops as a big deal. Yeah, if you had any thought that he did, I mean, to me, it was obvious he didn't. He wasn't doing anything. His tweets didn't encourage the crowd to leave. Nothing he did suggested that he would call the troops in. Now, the fact that he didn't, and now it's proven that he didn't, there was Mike Pence that did it, in spite of the fact that Mike Pence doesn't have the authority to do it, is so unconstitutional. It's so unthinkable that the president of the United States while the Capitol is being attacked does nothing. But we knew that. We knew that. He is unqualified because he's committed acts of treason against the United States. And that should make him unqualified to be president of the United States. So, yeah, anybody who's a citizen is not if you're criminal and not if you're shown in your behavior, shown in your behavior that you're unfit to be president and he's unfit to be president. He's unfit to pretty much do anything but he's certainly unfit to be president. I mean, what are we gonna learn from these? That Donald Trump was holding on to a conspiracy theory about a stolen election. There was unfounded, unconnected to any fact in reality that his own daughter didn't believe it, that the guy most loyal to him in the administration, his attorney general, William Barr, thought was in his own words on video last night bullshit, the fact that everybody, his advisors, everybody around him kept telling him there was no grounds to believe that the election was stolen and he kept going and he listened to the craziest, dumbest people that he could find to bolster his claims. Nobody's semi-rational in his administration and there was still a few semi-rational people in his administration. First, Barr was loyal to Trump. Barr came in in order to dispel all the different stuff against Trump and he did that. He was super loyal to Trump, but it turns out that when push come to shove, he was more loyal to reality in the end. And then of course, he still, now it's one thing if he did it and he let it go because he realized, yeah, okay, I did actually lose the election. No, the guy is still telling us he didn't lose the election. The guy is still telling us Barr was committed. He's still advocating for the same bogus, complete other lies. He continues with the same behavior that led to this. He continues to feed the worst kind of conspiratorial insurrectionist types that exist on the right. So I think what the committee ultimately, the report of the committee is gonna be incredibly valuable. I support the committee completely. I just think that it's prime time television. Nobody is gonna change their mind because the fact is, and this is the shocker, Trump is not the shocker. Trump is everything you'd expect Trump to be. The shocker is that some of you on my chat and something around a half to two thirds or I don't know what the number is, of the Republican party still believes his lies, still supports him, still thinks that he's legit, still thinks that he's their savior, still thinks that on January 6th, oh, those people were just trying to tour the Capitol. The fact that Tchaikovsky talks about them just touring the Capitol, the Tchaikovsky. This is one reason I will never watch this guy, never support this guy. It denies the violence, the fact that some people died, the fact that what they were actually doing there and the reason they were there and what they were chanting denies all that. No, they were just taking a stroll in the Capitol. So you have here prime time television that's being watched by people who already agree with everything that's being said there. You're not gonna change anybody's mind because the fact is the Republican party, people within the Republican party, a significant number of the people within the Republican party are not willing to change their minds. Are not willing to change their minds, are not willing to look at the evidence, are not willing to look at what actually happened, are not interested in the facts, not interested in the facts. They're committed to the person and that's all they care about. And that tells you a lot about the state of the Republican party. And those people are not being reached. Those people last night watched Taka, Taka Carlson. Taka Carlson, who, let me just find this quote. Taka Carlson, who refused to talk about it, refused to cover it, said in the beginning of the show, everything is upside down on my screen today. I'll find it a second unless I deleted it. So Taka on the show said, the whole thing is insulting. In fact, it's deranged. And we're not playing along. This is the only hour on American News channel that will not be carrying their propaganda line. They are lying and we're not going to help them do it. They're lying about what, Taka? What are they lying about? And if it's so deranged and it's such a lie, why did Fox Business cover it? Fox News didn't cover it. Why did Fox Business cover it? And why Taka? Interesting fact, I think. Why Taka? Did you run the whole show yesterday with no commercials? Not a single commercial break. You abandoning making money? Abandoning making money? Or were you afraid people might flip channels and encounter the hearing by accident during the commercials? You wanna make sure they were glued to you and God forbid they actually see the truth. Because you could argue it's a witch hunt, but I haven't heard anybody argue the fact. One fact, one fact that they talked about that is not true. Did Trump call the National Guard out? Did Trump call anybody to try to stop what was going on in the Capitol? Now, I get, I get that Republicans are complaining that it's a partisan thing, it's all Democrats. That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. It's partisan. But you know what? It's Republicans' fault. Republicans should have been at the forefront of the investigation. Republicans should have been the most passionate to discover the truth about what happened that day. It's their reputation. It's their voters, it's their people. Republicans should have sent their best people to be on the committee. But Republicans have proven themselves to be thoroughly, systematically dishonest. Now you can tell me Democrats are dishonest too, I agree. But we thought Republicans were better. They're not, they're worse. On the dishonesty stuff, they're worse. Now I never liked Liz Cheney. She was too much like her father. I didn't like her father. I didn't like the Neoconservatives. I wrote a whole book condemning Neoconservatism, including Dick Cheney wasn't really a Neocon, but it was gonna bring democracy to the world. He's behind the whole fiasco in the Middle East. And Liz Cheney was another Neocon with the same tendencies. I never liked her. But I love her now. She's actually got balls. She's got a spine in the face of the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to the Republican Party. She stood up and said, yeah, this is horrible and we need to get to the bottom of this. I mean, I don't think any Republican who voted against impeaching Trump the second time should be re-elected. There are cowards who would sell any of us down, downriver in a second if they thought it would give them more power, if they thought it wouldn't piss off their voters. They do anything to make their voters happy. Liz absolutely needs to win her primary. She is a hero, even though I disagree with her on policy. She is a hero for actually having, standing up for her ideals. And for the truth, not for her ideals, for the truth. For what actually happened. I don't understand what any of you thought happened on January 6th. It's quite clear what happened. And this committee is just reflecting back to us. And it's being done in a huge partisan way. Yeah, because Republicans refused, even though they should have been in the lead for this. They should have been their investigation. And remember the day of the event, the day after January 7th, every single Republican was horrified. Horrified by what had happened. We need to investigate it. We need to get the bottom of this. Trump might be responsible. These people are responsible. And then 10 days later, they all coward. All coward. There is no Bush-Cheney power base anymore. The Bush-Cheney power base is gone. But Trump needs to go down in order to save the country. Nevermind the Republican Party. Nevermind to save any particular political base. Trump has to go down to save this country. It's already might be too late for this country. But Trump is the worst thing to happen to this country in the last few decades. I know, you guys are not convinced, but time will tell. All right, Jeffrey, did you have a question or comment with the $20? Let's see, where would it be? Where would it be? In a society lacking political values, isn't it inevitable to end up with leader, let me just do this again one second. In a society lacking positive values, isn't it inevitable to end up with a leader whose power comes from a cult of personality? Yeah, unfortunately, I think it is. And a cult of personality is a good way to, is the right terminology. I think that's why we're heading towards some form of authoritarianism, because we are heading towards somebody with more charisma than Trump. We're heading towards somebody who has, that has more intelligence than Trump, who can manipulate the political system and create this cult of personality in a way that I don't think, I don't think Trump was able to. I think that the next real authoritarian would have to be a uniter, will have to be somebody who can bring the country together and get a majority, a significant sized majority of the people behind them and behind the authoritarian ways. So we will see, we will see, but yes, I think with no political values, with everybody being a statist, it's just a question of at what point, given that you don't have any values, you don't have any political philosophy, you don't believe in anything and the Republican Party doesn't stand for anything anymore, certainly nothing on the side of freedom and liberty and the Democratic Party doesn't stand for anything on the side of freedom and liberty. That what are you gonna stand with? You're upset, you're unhappy, things are not going your way, politically you feel abandoned. Well, you look and you support the first guy who shows up who you could admire and suppose you respect and worship and that's how you get a cult of personality and you always get a type of distress. That's why I think if we have a deep recession, who knows who wins in 2024? Because people will look for a savior. People will look for a savior. I'm just sticking to the topic, Enric says, the danger is not a group of delusional insurrectionists, it's the example not being taken seriously for a future fascist attempt that can be serious. Very good, Enric, absolutely right. It's not, this group was pathetic, nothing was gonna happen. Ultimately, it couldn't have gotten away with it, although Trump was trying all kinds of angles. But it wouldn't have happened. But the fact that a significant number of Americans is just, yeah, big deal. So they tried this silly thing and so what, the president supported them. So what, who cares? That's the danger. The danger is how it's interpreted by the fascist waiting in the sidelines. Absolutely, good point, Enric. All right, these are unrelated. Okay, let's do some unrelated questions because they put a lot of dollars into it and then we'll finish with progressives and retreat. And then I'll go with Celtics. So let's start with a Celtics question. Ashton says, by the way, how was Boston Celtics game? Was there still a lot of COVID restrictions? Who do you, who you got tonight? No COVID restrictions. I had a good seat, it cost me a fortune, but I had a good seat, it was amazing. It was so much fun. So much fun watching a game live, so much fun watching at the Boston Garden, rooting for the home team, so much fun watching these unbelievable athletes go at it and wow. I mean, look, I'm a huge Boston fan, but to watch Steph Curry dribble the ball, basically nobody could touch him and then go up and make a shot close to the basket, far from the basket, doesn't matter. Just watching him play in real life right in front of you. And the size of these guys and their athleticism, oh, so much fun. And then it was a fantastic game. It was a game where Boston played really, really well where, as you'd expect, Golden State came back in the third quarter powerfully, really, really strongly, took the lead at some point for a very short period of time. And then Boston came roaring back and the storylines were amazing. And to watch Brown score 17 points in the first quarter, which was just with this amazing play. So what I've decided is on either tomorrow or Sunday, I will do a show on the value of being a sports fan. That is, what is it that sports gives you? Why care about sports? Why care about sports? There's a scene in a movie that I'm also gonna review this weekend, the Bronx Tale, where one guy tells this kid, what are you waiting for the Yankees for? I mean, they don't care about you. They don't give one aot about you. Mickey Mantle, that, you know, who cares? Right, so why do you care? Why shouldn't anybody care about sports? Why are we roots for sports? Why does sports get so emotional? Why do we get so excited? So what is it about sports that is a value, an objective value? So we'll talk about that on either Saturday or Sunday. I'm not sure yet, but that'll be on the weekend. We'll do a show on that. That'll be a fun show. Hopefully you guys will show up. And I will also on that show be giving you a movie review of the Bronx Tale and of Star Trek, the first movie, the first Star Trek movie. So I'll be doing two movie reviews, plus a show on sports. Maybe I'll connect it to movies and sports. So that'll be fun. All right, let's see. Corey asks, off topic. What did you make of Ecom Boy trying to redefine welfare and capitalism in your recent debate? How can we get anywhere people are not even going to accept definition unless it suits their ideology rather than reality? Yeah, I mean, they want to be able to have the upside of capitalism and denounce it and undermine it at the same time. So they wanna say, oh, I'm full capitalism because I love markets, markets are great. Markets raise people out of poverty. They create all this wealth. But not too much, right? And we need to control the markets and we need to regulate them and we need to redistribute wealth because the poor, yeah, maybe it raised them out of poverty, but not that much. We need to help them even more because capitalism can't do it. So we want capitalism, but not too much and just, but I'm full capitalism because they wanted a cake and eat it too. They want, they're defining it and then they're definition of contradictory. They won't define by essentials and it's just proof that people can't think and yes, to the extent that people can't think, our ability to change the world is hampered significantly dramatically by the fact that people can't think and a great illustration effect that they can't think is the fact that they do not define their terms, they can't think in principles, they can't figure out what's important, what's not. Everything's a mush in their mind. Big problem, big, big problem. It's why I try to always define, always define. Hopefully that gives them a little bit of clarity. The audience, not the person I'm debating. All right, us fast by, Australian fast by. News and politics is very depressing and demonizing these days. Sorry, much of today's show. Is there any negative effect of stopping watching the news and being informed? I'm a fan, not a hater. Yeah, I keep telling you, stop watching the news. I'm a big fan of not watching the news. I don't watch the news. I read the news, which is easier than watching the news. But I keep telling you, you're wasting your life following politics. There's very little you can do about it. There's very little impact you can have on it. It's super depressing. There are areas in your life you have control over. Dedicate yourself to the areas of life you have control over. Focus mostly on that. And listen to your own book show to catch up on what's going on. So don't watch television. Don't read the news. Don't get that engaged. It's not, none of it is that important. Now, maybe the economics of it all because they help you plan for the future and know if you want to change jobs. If you're in business. So maybe the economic news is important. But the politics is completely a waste of time. I'll do the work, you pay me big bucks and you guys can just forget about it. Really. God, there's so many ways in which you could spend your time rather than watching politics and following politics. So yes, my view is absolutely given that the news and politics is so depressing and demoralizing, stay away from them. Although I'm gonna have a good piece of news in a minute. All right, Ren Wudows asks, what is your view on popular golfers joining live golf league funded by Saudi Arabia? I don't like anything funded by Saudi Arabia. You know, I understand why they do it. It's a lot of money in Saudi Arabia in our culture has been accepted in its part. Haven't we learned from Russia a lesson of authoritarians? Haven't we learned from China support for the NBA? How it silences people in the NBA? I would avoid it, but I understand why it's very hard to do. I would try in the way I live my life to minimize the support I provide authoritarians and particularly theocrats among the worst authoritarians. Bash Rannigan asks, do you think boxing is legitimate sport or glorified violence? Why don't you ask that in the next show, the show I do on sports? Why don't we leave all sports related questions for that? All right, Jeff, you'd get a lot more of my money if there were a way to ask questions before an episode begins. I see maybe 10% of your shows live, maybe post a schedule with topics, not sure if it's possible. Why don't you just send me an email with a bunch of questions and then whenever you're live, just contribute money that you think is worth those questions. I promise to answer them. If you promise to put the money on when you're on live for the questions that I've already answered. So all of you out there, send me questions by emails, tell me at the bottom, I promise to pay for these either through PayPal now or on the super chat. Please answer these and just do that. I have a hard time scheduling the topics way in advance, although I just told you I'm gonna do the sports topic and the movie review topic this weekend, maybe tomorrow. All right, tomorrow the show will be at 8 p.m. So we will have a show tomorrow. I'm gonna go watch the basketball. So today's show is a little short because A, we got to 712 bucks really, really, really quickly so we don't have to keep going. And B, because I wanna go watch the game. So oh, wait, I have another topic. Sorry, okay, one more topic quickly. Progressive's in retreat. I've told you this for a while now. I've been talking about it for a while. The fact is that when the Progressive's agenda comes before the American public, they voted down. We saw that last November. We saw it in the mayor's election in New York. We saw it in Minneapolis where defund the police got defeated. We saw it in Virginia where Republican governor for the first time in a while got elected because of critical race theory. And we just saw it on, well, it was a Tuesday in California. In the bastion of wacky left, San Francisco, in the bastion of the most progressive left wing where the district attorney of San Francisco was recalled. Recalled in a non-election. He was recalled because he was viewed as soft on crime. He's the guy who wouldn't prosecute shoplifting, who wouldn't prosecute certain other crimes, who generally didn't left a homeless alone to do whatever the hell they wanted, and generally was just soft on crime. Americans are not soft on crime. Americans will not tolerate soft on crime very long. This is why Democrats cannot win in this country long-term. This is why the Progressive agenda cannot be the governing agenda in this country. Americans will reject it. They reject CRT. They reject the guilt associated with race, although they should feel, not feel, they should recognize the injustices that racism has done in American history. They don't do enough of that, but they're just not gonna do it. They're not gonna buy the left full agenda. Now it's interesting, who voted to keep the guy, who voted to keep the guy in power in San Francisco, the district attorney, this way out leftist. Only people who voted for him were educated, wealthy, white people. The people who overwhelmingly voted against him, overwhelmingly voted against him. Asians, Asians are like 80% or more. They just overwhelmingly did not want to have anything to do. Why? Asians might vote Democratic a lot of times, but when it comes to kid's education, when it comes to safety, no nonsense, zero nonsense when it comes to that. The only reason they vote Democratic is because how alienating Republicans are on religion, on immigration, but Asians should be a Republican constituency. Not all Asians, of course, but Asians overwhelmingly voted to get rid of this guy. So did, by the way, other minorities in San Francisco. The only group that voted to keep him was educated whites. All right, we have a few questions. Let's do Frank says, is politics of interest within a philosophical framework and strictly so? Look, politics is of interest because politics affects you. It impacts your life. It's important. It has important implications for your life. So it's important in that sense, but people obsess about it and it becomes all consuming. So if that's the case, see I consume a lot of politics, but I don't obsess about it. It doesn't depress me. It doesn't have an impact on me. So I can handle it, but you guys don't need to because you can't affect it. I'm a public intellectual. It's my job to try to affect it and to try to educate you about it. So I have to study it, but if it's not your job and it is important within a philosophical context, it's important within a cultural context. It's an important within a public intellectual context. It's important within the context of wanting to actively influence the culture. But if you're not actively trying to influence the culture, if you're just trying to live your life and it's a distraction and a depressing distraction, then leave it alone and focus on the good in your life. Okay, bash back again. Oh, we already did that. I said I would answer it next time. Jason Adams, I arrived late. Watch Adam Sandler's movie, Hustle, whoops. Watch Adam Sandler's movie, Hustle. Before the sports episode, you will do it is whiplash-esque, whiplash-esque. Adam Sandler's Hustle. Okay, I mean, I don't know if I'm actually gonna have time because I might be doing the show tomorrow, but I've written it down and I'll try to get to it. All right, guys, I'm gonna go watch the Celtics. Oh, you asked me who's gonna win tonight? The Celtics are gonna win this. I think the Celtics will win the series in either five or six games. They'll win tonight. They might win on Monday, but they'll certainly win on a Thursday of next week. So this will not go to seven games because the Celtics will win tonight. That is my prediction for what it's worth, not that much. I'm gonna enjoy the game. I hope you guys enjoy the game. I will see you all tomorrow, 8 p.m., same time, same place. Thanks for all the super chatters. Thank you for joining me. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Ooh, so few likes given how many people watched. We could definitely do better than that. So like the show before you leave.